Letters to the Editor
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I'm sorry
but what is it again that differentiates us from a fascist police state?
There seems no end to the depth of the depravity of the forces arrayed against us Americans.
Yet despite this, there seems only occasional faint glimmerings of mild thoughts among Americans that maybe something is not right.
Is this what is promised to the children of this nation? A poisonous, encyclopedic churn of lies designed to TRAP them in a lifetime of ineffectualism and self defeat? If so, then this is not the country to raise kids-- not in such a false venue.
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8000 Pages?
Hah!
In civil litigations you were lucky if all the opposition did was drop 8000 pages on you during discovery. In some complex litigations you could get buried in 8000 cartons of documents.
Glenn can do that standing on his head with one eye closed. It is the writing that is hard work. Send him turkee.
And now they have this e-discovery thing. Glad I'm not a litigator. I'd rather be an allegator.
Criticism of American discovery
The use of discovery has been criticized as favoring the wealthier side, in that it enables parties to drain each other's financial resources in a war of attrition. For example, one can make information requests which are expensive and time-consuming for the other side to fulfill; produce hundreds of thousands of documents of questionable relevance to the case; file requests for protective orders to prevent the deposition of key witnesses; and so on. In a scathing critique of the American legal profession, attorney Cameron Stracher described a variety of unpleasant tactics common in the United States, and concluded:
“ With the noble sentiment of "levelling the playing field" so that no party has an undue information advantage, the writers of the discovery rules created a multilevel playing field where the information-rich can kick the information-poor in the head and escape unscathed. "Discovery" is anything but .... Hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain the status quo, to preserve the information-rich at the expense of the information-poor. Thousands of lawyer hours to keep the discovery process as unrevealing as possible. The best minds of a generation thinking of new ways to manipulate, distort, and conceal.[1]
Tort reform supporters argue that such tactics are often used by plaintiffs' lawyers to impose costs on defendants to force settlements in unmeritorious cases to avoid the cost of discovery. Victim's rights advocates, on the other hand, believe that the opposite is true: defendants typically have greater resources than plaintiffs and, accordingly, they impose costs on parties deserving compensation by dragging out the litigation process as opposed to offering a fair settlement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_(law)
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You are free to leave anytime
Just cross the border at Mexico or Canada with your passport. Good luck requesting diplomatic asylum anywhere by claiming you have fled from a fascist police state and were the subject of political persecution.
but what is it again that differentiates us from a fascist police state?
And merely asking that question has not caused you to be "disappeared".
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re: 8,000 pages
LWM is quite right. I am a litigator. We just dropped 10,000 pages, not including several gigs of e-mails. I can also review e-mails at quite a clip- we are talking at least five a minute, sometimes quicker if I hit a batch of the same stuff. If you know what you are looking for it's easy.
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Arianna Huffington on The Colbert Report
Colbert: So (McCain) changed his opinions from 2000 to 2008. People do that.
Huffington: He has not changed his opinions. He has replaced his mind with George Bush’s mind. I wouldn’t be surprised if right now, he’s somewhere at the Texas ranch, clearing brush, like George Bush.
Colbert: Perhaps he knows that that’s what he has to do to get elected. He was “The Maverick” in 2000; that did not get him elected. But if he toes the party line in 2008, maybe that…he’s just doing what he needs to do to get elected. What’s so wrong with that?
Huffington: You mean selling his soul in order to get elected?
[snip]
Huffington: He was a real reformer. And now, he’s basically completely surrendered on everything. He wants us all to stay in Iraq of course indefinitely. And here’s the one little problem: that he has this kind of passion for Iraq. [..] Because he has this passion for Iraq, that’s his Viagra.
Colbert: He has…I guess the warning on that should be, if your erection last more than a hundred years, pull out.
(from Crooks and Liars)
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This is not the first story disappeared...
The past few months have seen a few, but the biggest was the blackout on the story about cabinet level meetings (including the VP) on how to torture individual detainees. The President himself confirmed this and then...crickets.
I would also include the lack of curiosity about McCain's tax returns, while harping on Obama and Clinton's.
It is also important to note that for a long time the media blamed their lack of interest in these kinds of stories on the Democrats, saying they should have been more aggressive. In both the propaganda and torture stories leading Democrats have been screaming about them, but still no interest. Shameful.
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Thanks Retired Military Patriot.
I have head many war testimonials. It got to were I could not remember who was going to kill themselves, so I left the Vet Center work. A Air Force 'shrink' told me, or rather ordered me to 'take walks along waterways'... etc. He was great.
The PTSD Air Force Doc said my heart may implode. I had to look that up. gads.
There are names on the Vietnam Memorial who were ambushing mule caravans.
The mules had raw opium in the saddle bags. We were in Burma then. Afghanistan today.
I've had former soldiers weep, telling me of killing their own in "friendly fire"... and murder.
Some days I gagged in the waste basket. Such as : after hearing of a psychopathic who slit soldiers throats.
If a grunt was in a relatively "safe" area (within barbed wire with artillery 155 guns) he'd snore.
Someone was slitting throats if ya'd felt safe, but died while on bunker-guard duty. Serious.
`
Birds are chirping beautifully as I write this.... It's a get baby-sat-day for me. I'm lucky. Who wants to harvest greens in the rain anyway? okay. sthu. Thank the Air Force Medic. I once mentioned this to Chris Floyd.
He had a A.F. brother who listened.
P.S. No one guarded the 155 rounds.
An Iraq doc said the 155's make jello.
The bodies are so obliterated. O, wow.
Guard the museums and get some gold.
I'd rather watch some real golden retrievers.